


Both Song and Tree

by bold_seer



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Ambiguous Time, Dreams vs. Reality, Ficlet, M/M, Nature, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-14
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2019-04-22 23:13:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14319177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bold_seer/pseuds/bold_seer
Summary: Strange that it can be so comforting, spending time with someone whose presence highlights his own limitations.





	Both Song and Tree

_\- could stay._ The suggestion is on his tongue, the proposal there underneath, when uncertainty grips him. What he’s offering, _if_ he’s offering. What the implications of either possibility are. He retreats, and the sentence melts away. The words disappear back into his throat, or his thoughts, or whatever part of him conjured them up.

Strange that it can be so comforting, spending time with someone whose presence highlights his own limitations. He is bright enough, he supposes. But Coop, Coop shines like the sun. In a suit, weaving together dreams and logic. In a tux, looking like the leading man in a black and white movie. Someone out of this world. Out of Twin Peaks, the surrounding woods, and everything Harry knows.

Harry is a distant star. One of many in the night sky, united in the darkness. How small they seem by themselves, how insignificant. Mere flickers of light, viewed from Earth.

Or perhaps it’s the other way around. Harry, feet steady on the ground, on the same paths he has always trodden. Coop, navigating some faraway universe of cryptic dreams and nightmares. Too great and unknowable for one man, even a man like Cooper.

In this universe, these woods, he hears a robin. Everything else stills, Mother Nature holding her breath before the storm.

“Think we should head back.” His voice sounds strangely tired, a recording played backwards and forwards. Worn over time, waiting for something. “Going to rain.”

It’s not a long walk; they’ll make it.

But before he turns, Cooper touches his shoulder. It burns. Sparks, like electricty. For one absurd moment he thinks he’ll - Coop will - he doesn’t know what he thinks. There was never any thought at all. It’s quiet and getting dark.

“Harry,” says Cooper, as he looks him in the eye. “I place myself entirely in your capable hands.” With such solemn earnestness, the way someone would say they trust you with their _life_ , even their _heart_.

Right.

They take the same path. Harry knows it well, so well he thinks he’d never lose his way here, amid the trees. Even at dusk. Even at night, with only a flashlight. Even in his sleep.

Yet when he turns, something feels irrevocably different. Something he missed. Lit big, like the sign of the Double-R Diner, or obscured, a planet you must know to look for. Something he failed to see.

Maybe just shadows planting doubts in his mind, the way they do in dreams.


End file.
